USA TODAY’s policy for the 2020 election and the transition of President-elect Joe Biden continue this week as he continues to implement his potential options for senior positions in his administration and states continue to certify their vote count.
President Donald Trump has yet to concede the race, however, his administration has paved the way for Biden’s team to gain access to federal resources and briefings on the transition.
Be sure to refresh this page to get the latest choice and transition data.
Biden chooses everyone for the White House communications team
President-elect Joe Biden appointed his White House communications team on Sunday, opting for a women’s team led by Jen Psaki, a veteran of President Barack Obama’s administration, as his first press secretary.
Psaki, who held many positions at Obama, in addition to the White House communications director, oversaw biden’s transition team confirmation team.
Biden also called senior crusader assistant Kate Bedingfield as White House communications director and Symone Sanders as senior advisor and leading spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris. Bidenfield worked as deputy crusader and communications director for the Biden-Harris crusade. Sanders as senior crusader advisor.
Other communications include: Elizabeth Alexander, First Lady Jill Biden’s Director of Communications; Ashley Etienne, Harris Communications Director; Karine Jean-Pierre, Deputy Press Manager; and Pili Tobar, deputy director of communications at the White House.
“I am proud to announce that the White House’s first high-level communications team is made up entirely of women. These professional and experienced communicators bring varied perspectives to their paintings and a non-unusual commitment to better rebuild this country,” Biden said in a statement.
– Joey Garrison and Bart Jansen
President-elect Joe Biden slipped and sprained his ankle on Saturday while playing with his dog Major.
“As a precautionary measure, you will be examined this afternoon by an orthopedic surgeon,” the president-elect told the press.
Biden is lately at Delaware Orthopaedic Specialists in Newark, where he arrived shortly after four o’clock in the afternoon. His workplace took an inventory of his condition around 6 p. m. , after he forbade journalists from seeing the president-elect enter the facility.
According to a report from his doctor, Kevin O’Connor, Biden suffered a sprained right foot and, although “the first X-rays claim that there is no apparent fracture,” he will get a CT scan for further examination.
“The follow-up CT scan showed the hair fractures in President-elect Biden’s lateral and intermediate cuneiform bones, which are in the foot part,” O’Connor said in a statement.
The president-elect will have to wear a walking boot for several weeks.
Biden played for Major, one of his two German shepherds, according to his office. Biden’s circle of relatives followed Major in 2018, 10 years after obtaining his first dog, Champ.
The Bidens said they were planning to take their dogs to the White House. Major, who followed the Delaware Animal Protective Association, will be the first rescue dog to live in the White House. The Bidens also announced their goal of talking when they move in. to the White House.
– Matthew Brown, USA TODAY and Brandon Holveck, Delaware News Journal
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris decided whether she and President-elect Joe Biden “will be in a position to stand up to” President Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
“Please, ” said Harris on the matter, laughing at a reporters’ organization.
After a traditionally bitter political crusade that has been overshadowed by a global pandemic and national protests, 2024 would possibly seem like a remote perspective for many Americans. However, many Democrats and Republicans have taken steps to imply that they are already preparing for other bitter ones. choice in 4 years.
Trump himself has said he is interested in a 2024 attempt to reclaim the Oval Office, against Axios, Bloomberg and the Washington Post.
A POLICY/Morning Consult vote conducted from November 21-23 also found that 53% of the Republican electorate would vote for Trump in 2024 if they chose to run. trump’s loss.
An Economist/YouGov vote conducted after biden’s victory screening found that 86% of Trump’s electorate did not believe Biden’s victory was legitimate.
Biden, 78, will be the older president to take office, fueling the hypothesis that he may not run for a moment. Harris, 56, would probably be one of the first favorites for the Democratic nomination if Biden didn’t seek re-election. Choice.
– Matthew Brown
Republican Congressman David Valadao defeated Democrat T. J. Cox in the District of California, Associated Press reported Friday. The victory is the eleventh seat that Republicans snatched from Democrats in the House of Representatives in the 2020 election.
Valadao’s victory comes when declining Republicans outperformed President Donald Trump in the country, even in solid blue California.
The neighborhood, basically located in the San Joaquin Valley, favors Democrats slightly, according to Cook’s Political Report. Valadao won the seat with a focus on agricultural issues, which are at the heart of the district’s economy. Although he supported Trump in 2020, he is only lukewarm when it comes to the president.
This year, Valadao won the district by just under 2,000 votes. The district is one of at least 3 Republicans of the 2018 Democratic “blue wave” that swept the Golden State.
Cox, who won the seat in 2018 through 862 votes, has not yet conceded the election.
– Matthew Brown
By leaving office, President Donald Trump is doing everything he can to get credit for the new COVID-19 vaccines, to the point that he claims to have developed them himself.
“I developed vaccines that other people didn’t think they had for five years,” Trump said in his Sunday phone interview on Fox News, adding later that other people would consult to credit President-elect Joe Biden.
Operation Warp Speed of the Trump administration helped, but doctors and drug brands were the ones who developed the actual vaccines that will soon be available for public use.
Jonathan Reiner, professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University, said Trump sounds as if King Louis XIV proclaims “the state is me,” the state is me. “
“PfizerBioNTech and Modern vaccines were created through brilliant and committed clinical and scientific trials, as well as through thousands of others who volunteered to get vaccinated for the studies,” Reiner said. “Glory belongs to them. “
– David Jackson
Senator Roy Blunt, Republican for Missouri, declined to acknowledge that Joe Biden was “president-elect” in a Sunday interview with CNN’s “State of the Union. “Rejection came when President Donald Trump and many elected Republicans continue to question the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
“The president-elect will have to be elected president technically through the electorate. This happens in mid-December,” Blunt rightly said, avoiding the truth that there is no doubt that the electorate will decide on Biden as the next president of the United States. .
“There is no official position for president-elect,” Blunt said, arguing that the difference a “straw man” created through the media. But in 2016, Blunt’s workplace issued a press release “congratulating President-elect Donald Trump” the day after the election and long before the electorate was to convene.
Federal and state courts have found that trump campaign fraud allegations have not been uncovered. While Blunt’s comments that call into question Biden’s prestige as president-elect echo trump’s attacks on electoral legitimacy, it did not happen to say that the election had been stolen, as Trump argued uncovered.
“I don’t think it’s been rigged, yet I think there are things that have been done that shouldn’t have been done,” Blunt said without specifying what electoral misconduct he meant. “And I think there was a voter detail fraud as there is in each and every election. But I have no explanation as to why the numbers that would have made that difference are there. “
Election officials across the country demonstrated that there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud during the election. An investigation through USA TODAY did not discover cases of voter fraud in the undecided states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. country has also been investigated and demystified.
Blunt predicted that Trump would actively participate in Republican politics.
“I think it’s an important role for President Trump. And I hope he accepts it and watch you go to what comes next for him, assuming this election goes as it seems,” he said.
– Matthew Brown
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump continued to protest the election in a television interview on Sunday, but has not yet provided any evidence, and has not said when he could abandon election demands and lawsuits that have been defeated.
Trump has said his court cases may last beyond the Electoral College vote on December 14 and even the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on January 20.
“My brain might not be replaced in six months,” Trump told Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures in his first interview since Election Day.
A steady stream of judges and election officials across the country, including Republicans, said the election was fair and criticized Trump’s legal team for filing misleading complaints.
Ignoring a lawsuit in Pennsylvania, a federal appeals court said Friday that “injustice fees are serious. But pointing out that an election is unfair doesn’t mean it is. The charges require express accusations and then evidence. We don’t have any here. “
Election demands and demanding situations have been lucky in Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada and Georgia.
In a 46-minute phone verbal exchange with Fox, Trump criticized Republicans for questioning his accusations of voter fraud.
That includes Georgia, the site of two Senate towers coming out of the U. S. Senate, as Trump considers campaigning in Georgia for incumbent Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, even as he has lashed out at Republican officials like Governor Brian. Kemp.
“The governor did nothing, ” said Trump. No did nothing. I’m ashamed to have approved. “
Trump’s comments in the interview represented little more than spiel, court cases and conspiracy theories without evidence.
“It’s everywhere, ” said Bradley Moss, a national security lawyer. “He’s got nothing, he knows it’s all over and he’s going crazy with everyone who’s going to pay attention to him. “
Other analysts responded to Fox host Maria Bartiromo’s Softball Question, and some noted that Trump would buy his own news network.
“MariaBartiromo is auditioning for a task at Newmax this morning,” former President Bill Clinton’s press secretary Joe Lockhart tweeted.
– David Jackson
MADISON, Wisconsin – A partial recount reinforced President-elect Joe Biden’s victory through 87 votes on Sunday, and President Donald Trump has said it is a trial to nullify the results.
The final touch of the resumption of the Dane County vote came two days after the end of the Milwaukee County recount.
Biden won 132 votes in Milwaukee County and Trump forty-five votes in Dane County. Altogether, biden’s highest state margin at 21,695.
Trump’s crusade paid $3 million to cover the counting charge in Wisconsin’s two maximum democratic counties so he can file a lengthy lawsuit to claim the state’s 10 electoral votes.
Trump tweeted Saturday that he would take legal action in Wisconsin until Tuesday, when the state Electoral Commission is expected to certify the results.
“The Wisconsin recount is not about locating errors in the recount, it is about locating other people who voted illegally, and this case will start after the recount ends on Monday or Tuesday,” Trump wrote.
– Patrick Marley, Milwaukee Newspaper Sentinel
Retired Joint Chiefs of Staff President Michael Mullen expressed his fear on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that the recent assassination of Iran’s most sensible nuclear scientist will “make things much harder” for Biden’s new leadership to negotiate with the country.
Mullen, the country’s top army officer from 2007 to 2011, called the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who oversaw Iran’s nuclear program for more than a decade, a “major event” that can particularly impede U. S. -Iran relations as well as the president. . elect joe Biden takes office.
Mullen’s considerations were shared through retired submarine William McRaven, who told ABC News “This Week” that the resolution reinforces Biden’s “difficult challenge” in its negotiations with Iran.
Iran is already unlikely to be receptive to a new deal with the Biden administration after its delight with President Donald Trump, who withdrew from an agreement negotiated under Obama’s administration to slow iran’s nuclear weapons progression, McRaven said.
“Now, by attacking their nuclear scientists and intensifying this effort, the Iranians will be forced to get a faster bomb,” and Iran will be more reluctant to sign any long-term agreement, McRaven predicted.
Mullen the resolution of Trump’s resolve to assassinate Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. The resolution infuriated the Iranian government and the public, and led experts to worry about the prospect of an open war.
Fakhrizadeh “is not only the brain but also the pastime behind” Iran’s nuclear program, Mullen said. Biden, who has said he will reopen talks with Iran, is likely to face an even more sour and diplomatically resilient country.
“I hope President-elect Biden can succeed and calm the waters, but I think this greatly increases tensions,” Mullen said.
– Matthew Brown
After helping mobilize voter turnout among other left-wing youth and Democrats, progressive leaders must force Biden’s administration to deliver on the promises of the crusade: combat climate change, combat the COVID-19 pandemic, and provide student debt relief.
“It’s 2015. It’s 2010,” “It’s 2005,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic socialist from New York, said at a rally with progressives last week. position on the table. “
But as their political demands progress, there remains one impediment: who will control the Senate?
Two tournaments in Georgia will determine whether Republicans will retain space when the new Congress is sworn in in January. The progressive wish list will be left in the background.
– Rebecca Morin